The short video Kony 2012, posted on YouTube on March 5, 2012, and narrated by Invisible Children's US founders, Jason Russell, has become viral on the Internet with millions of views worldwide.

The video also drew significant attention in China. On the popular Chinese video site Youku, the same video harvested over 8 million views in a few days and people on social networks such as Weibo and Renren circulated the film widely. Chinese subtitles were also added.

Initially, comments show that most people were outrageous of the crimes committed by Kony as depicted in the video. People appealed to their friends to spread the film and “make Kony famous”, as called by the Invisible Children.

Please watch it patiently until the last minute! At the age of information boom, it is our fortune to be able to quickly know the unknown world beyond our touch; it is our power to be able to hit the keyboard and make a change to the world and people within a minute! Please make a good use of it! Make invisible power visible, make Kony famous!

• The LRA [Lord's Resistance Army] is not in Uganda but now operates in the DRC, South Sudan and the Central African Republic

• In October last year, Obama authorised the deployment of 100 US army advisers to help the Ugandan military track down Kony, with no results disclosed to date.

• The LRA is much smaller than previously thought. It does not have have 30,000 or 60,000 child soldiers. The figure of 30,000 refers to the total number of children abducted by the LRA over nearly 30 years.

Chinese bloggers, moreover, widely questioned the intention of the video besides the doubt of misinformation. Many thought the purpose of the video was to keep the United States (US) army in Africa and call for US intervention in the region.

Shen Yang, a Renren user, posted a long article [zh] expressing her doubt and got thousands of views and comments debating the issue:

Within a bit more than a week, a video named Kony 2012 went viral and drew tens of millions of views. Actually the idea that “all together we can change the world” is not fresh. To me, similar slogans with appeals of the kind have been banal. The mixture of universal values, international humanitarianism, and sympathy was greatly amplified by the viral video and Internet, making a huge impact.

Whereas the author says that she doesn't tend to point finger at the US government, she did point out that she was suspicious of the motivation of Invisible Children, the so-called “NGO”.

非洲自身的情况很复杂，不是大家派军队过去抓个人击毙几十个军人就能解决的，不适当的介入完全可能导致更糟的情况发生

The situation in Africa is complicated. The dispatch of troops to kill scores of soldiers there cannot solve the problems. Misled intervention may even result in something worse.

I was suspicious of some inclinations exposed in the video: 1) the consistent seeking of funding, 2) the appeal to the international society, the US in particular (with a letter addressed to Obama shown in the video), to capture Kony.
There are no more than some hundreds of soldiers in the LRA, posing no significant threat to the local community. The local government is fully capable to sanction the organization without support from other countries. The Ugandan government has never formally asked for any support from the international community.

Numerous interventions in the name of decapitating Joseph Kony have been carried out within the last decade but were all in vain. Each time, the local community suffered from collateral damage and revenge and LRA personnel were dispersed among civilians.

She opposes the blind belief on what the video tells and was alerted that the masses may be manipulated. She also jettisons the Chinese video description seen on Youku which states that Kony has to be captured and penalized:

It is not simply a duality of good and evil. It is more complicated than that. The LRA problem for example is a result of tribal conflicts and power games. The continuous intervention of western powers in Africa has brought no benefit but actually intensified the complexity of power structures and interest conflicts in the local community.

If people really want to help Africa, why not appeal to Africans to make their state sovereignty intact and lay the constitutional foundation firm? So-called charity donations not only failed to help Africa rid of poverty but actually fueled the high inflation and government corruption, throwing the society into a vicious cycle.

The name of the article, actually, is ‘Media as a Weapon’.

A more aggressive point of view [zh] questioning the US's support of the video as an excuse for future intervention is expressed by Ye Ruihong. The technique of storytelling employed in the video, he said, is very dangerous because with a good story no body cares what the truth is.

看完以后，我感到我一直以来的一个想法得到了印证：在这个娱乐为王的时代里，一个好故事就意味着一切。真相？无关紧要。

After watching the video, I felt one of my long-held thoughts was proved: in this entertainment-above-all time, a good story is everything. Truth? Not that important.

I am not saying that the whole story is fake…but the story as a whole is fake: “there is a bad guy in Africa, but no one cared about him in spite of his crimes. However, because of the call by human-peace-loving Facebookers, the representative of justice, Uncle Sam, is finally going to take out the bad guy. You have to support us by watching the video, and let Uncle Sam stay in Africa.

The author echoes the saying that the video is a conspiracy to consolidate US control in Uganda for the oil discovered there:

It doesn't tell you the US army has no intention to withdraw from Uganda at all, so we don't have to ask them to stay; it doesn't tell you Invisible Children is not founded by a group of young men but former bankers in JP Morgan; it doesn't tell you oil was found in Uganda in 2006.

It doesn't tell you how the kingdom of Hawaii was annexed; it doesn't tell you how Cuba was colonized and the US installed one dictator after another…it doesn't tell you how the Philippines was colonized by the US in World War Two [WW2] and then economically colonized after WW2…it doesn't tell you how the US invaded the Bahamas in the name of justice to control the canal… After all, the US would use the media to tell every one how anti-human the enemy is and then invade openly.

事实是简单的：美国从来不会为了帮助其他国家实现和平、民主或者自由而出兵。美国的军事行动从来都只是为了美国的利益。

It is simple: the US never helped others for the sake of peace, democracy or freedom. US military action is all about the US interest.

The “best” and most hypocritical thing about the movie is that it tries to convince people a social network earning huge profit by providing entertainment would change something….the only thing Facebook is focusing on and has accomplished is to keep people on it and get more profit.

I don't know how many people remember that in 2005 there was a huge event called Live 8, asking G8 to raise their aid to poor countries to 50 billions. Later, leaders of many countries promised to act too.

然后，没有行动。 至今，那些个承诺都不过是空话。而人们是善忘的，

Then, no action. So far, those promised are made in vain. People tend to forget.

Therefore, how effective a lie is depends on how many people are involved. It is obviously a campaign to justify the military presence of the US in Africa but now it turns into YOUR appeal for the intervention. Goebbels said a lied repeated 10,000 times becomes the truth. He is out of date. Now, as long as you are involved in the making of a lie for once, the lie is then the truth for you. All the people that helped distribute the video have proved it.

于是，就不会有人去追究，谁造就了几个世纪以来亚非拉的贫穷与支离？ 所以，真正要做的不是呼吁美国去插手，而是叫它收手。

So, no one would ask any more who should be responsible for the poverty and disintegration of Asia and Africa in the centuries. What we really need to do is not to ask for US intervention, but ask for its withdrawal.